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Undercover in Toronto

Forget bed bugs — Toronto is crawling with spies. They’ve been deep undercover since early last spring and we never even knew it — until now.

That’s because it’s taken several months for a spy show shot on the streets of Toronto to be seen in Canada. Covert Affairs stars Piper Perabo (Coyote Ugly) as Annie Walker, a young CIA spy in training who gets a chance to strut her stuff — especially her exceptional linguistic skills — when she is unexpectedly (and suspiciously) bumped up to a field operative.

They all work the streets of Toronto, which doubles for Washington, D.C. The series is already a hit on the USA Network, renewed for a second season. It makes its Canadian premiere on Showcase tonight at 10 p.m.

Not a minute too soon for the cast and crew, who up until now have only been able to see their show off grey-market satellite dishes or from screeners send up from America. Not that they have time to watch TV, says director and executive producer Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity). “Nobody involved actually has any time to watch TV,” he says.

Liman was speaking on the phone from London, where he was working on a science fiction feature titled All You Need is Kill. Besides directing The Bourne Identity and producing the sequels he also covered the spy racket in 2005’s Mr. & Mrs. Smith.

He says cranking out episodes of Covert Affairs is “by far more gruelling than anything I’ve ever faced in a movie. As soon as Piper is done on the set she’s got to go into training. I don’t think I’ve ever worked an actress that hard in my life.”

Yet Perabo, a 34-year-old native of Dallas, Texas, takes it all in stride. “I think Piper is incredible,” says Liman, who also had praise for Naomi Watts, the lead actress in his recent real life spy tale about the Valerie Plame affair, Fair Game. “Both play strong female spies and are just two of the kindest, most down-to-earth actors — not even actors, two of the nicest people I’ve ever met. That’s a qualification, ‘nicest actor.’ Just straight human beings, good hearts.”

Parebo is just as big a fan of Liman. At last summer’s TV critics press tour, when Covert Affairs was introduced into the U.S. market, she said she jumped at the chance to work with the director. She’s a big fan of his “guerrilla” style of filmmaking, his ability to make films and TV shows on the fly with whatever resources are at hand.

“It’s like if you gave a film student all the money in the world,” she says, citing instances of Liman using a wheelchair as a camera dolly and lighting night scenes with flashlights and car headlights. “It’s so much fun to shoot with somebody like that.”

Perabo says she gets a kick out of being a TV spy, dashing around in cars and duking it out with the bad guys. “All the physical stuff helps you get there emotionally,” she says, recalling one episode where “I’m fighting a guy while I’m driving a car — and he has a gun on me.”

Liman says the spy games are fun but the real appeal of Covert Affairs, as he sees it, “is the very universal story of seeing a young person in a new city trying to establish a life for themselves. Her job happens to be a covert operative but the issues she’s wrestling with happen to be universal issues.”

Liman says he never saw Undercovers, a spy series which flopped this fall despite being hyped as the next Mr. & Mrs. Smith. “Sometimes people think spy stories in of themselves are cool enough or exciting enough and that’s all the audience needs,” he says. “Even with spy stuff, the audience still wants great characters.”

Liman loves shooting in Toronto as does Perabo, who quickly fell in love with the people and restaurants along Queen St. W. She marvels at the good-natured Canadian crew, even at the end of a 17-hour shift. “People say ‘Good morning,’ and ‘How are you?’ and, even, ‘Let me help you with that,’ ” she says. “That’s not always the case other places.”

Executive producer David Bartis says the tax incentives helped bring the production across the border but there are many reasons for staying. “It’s an incredibly versatile city,” he says.

Besides doubling for Washington, Bartis and his crew have set scenes in Sri Lanka, London and Zurich without ever leaving the GTA. “Believe it or not,” he says, “there are parts of Queen St. W. that look just like Zurich architecture.”

The cast have snuck in and out of neighbourhoods so far with ease, but now that the series is finally airing in Canada, their cover may be blown. A little recognition in Canada might not be a bad thing, reasons Liman.

He tells a story of flying to Banff last winter to do a little skiing. “I was clearing customs in Calgary when I got pulled into the penalty-box area,” he says, already sounding like a local.

Liman, who had already shot the pilot for Covert Affairs in Toronto, was grilled by the customs officials. They were hassling the guy behind The Bourne Identity for not having a work permit — convinced he was sneaking in to direct another movie. “Can you prove you’re just here to ski?” he was asked.

“Wow,” thought Liman, “I know my last film wasn’t that well received, but Jesus — you Canadians are tough!”

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